User Reviews

Ronan Myers is a character who has featured in a previous Jack Taylor film as a strange young man with issues.

It seems Ronan has been kidnapped and tortured. His girlfriend comes to Jack looking for help despite both having a murky history with each other. It turns out that the Myers family is rather wealthy and his father has hired a cocky cockney private investigator, James Mason (Christopher Fulford) who gets in Jack's way.

Meanwhile Kate is in hospital with her medical issues and her cousin Darragh once again helps out Jack seemingly attracted to the danger.

I could not help thinking despite the drinking, the attitude, Jack just cannot help coming to the aid of a damsel in distress, his nemesis has taken the same gamble leading to an eye watering sequence where Jack himself gets brutally tortured.

There is a violent climax at the end set in a school as deep buried issues come to the surface. A strong but disturbing story. Fulford provides intriguing support to the regular cast.

I'm not sure how many I've seen - probably at least four or five now, and two in the past seven days - but this is easily the best of them, and much of the credit for that might have been down to the quality, and contrasting nature, of the two English-born support actors. (Fancy that! a series set in one of the most Irish of cities, featuring a most prototypically Irish detective, has as its lead a Scottish actor boasting the worst Irish accent this side of Pierce Brosnan, and two decidedly English supporting actors, albeit of decidedly contrasting mien. Some Irish joke, eh?)

The plot is fun, no less so for mostly being of the 'seen-it-all-before' variety, with plenty of red herrings, larger-than-life characters, back- stories, and 'exotic' locations; there are cults, too, and people with more money than sense, of pasts coming back to haunt people, and the inspirations of Nietszche, Sun Tzu, and the like. What's not to like? So anyway, to start with, Jack is hired by a reformed poor little rich girl to rescue her poor little rich boy beau, who's just had his finger cut off, with promises of more to follow, including hers. Problem is, the boy's father, mistrustful of Jack, has hired a reputable English detective to do the same job , a specialist in technology and more modern methods than Jack tends to favour, and they take an instant dislike to each other.

Iain Glen, alone, has always been reason enough to watch these stories, but not solely to laugh at his Irish accent, or spend too much time trying to extrapolate back to his native enunciations: a real man's man, with the grizzled good looks and laconic drawl perfect for this part. I don't recall having seen him in anything else, but he fits the character like a glove, as does his inhabiting of Galways bleak, windy, rainswept streets. The sun never shines much on Galway, in my experience, but then people don't tend to go there for the sun and the city looks great shot from the air, and the producers never fail it in this regard.

For me, Jack Monaghan, as Darragh Noonan, has been a vast improvement on Killian Scott,possessing far more personality and uniqueness: a perfect counterpoint to Jack, and frequent annoyance to the cousin who's the object of Jack's desires. Hopefully, we'll see more of the English detective, Mason, too, played here by Christopher Fulford, and shots of Connemara: that, at least, would do wonders for the Irish Tourist Board.

A little more screen time for Garret Keogh, Jack's ex-Garda boss, wouldn't go amiss,either, although the cameo nature of Jack's priest buddy is just right, and the smart-arse one-liners that their chance encounters provokes - from both sides - are taken in good humour by both sides, too. In a previous episode the priest had, unwittingly, helped Jack solve the mystery; here, he merely helped Jack put a better spin on his mother's mistreatment of him. But then, isn't that what priests are supposed to do?